On Turning 23

Here’s what some other people were doing at my age…

Wittgenstein went into self-imposed exile in Norway.
Joyce went into self-imposed exile in Switzerland.
Beckett started teaching at Ecole Normale (and met Joyce).
Nietzsche met Wagner (and started teaching at Basel).
Wagner wrote his second opera.
Mozart wrote his eleventh.
Kubrick and Tarkovsky directed their first films.
Tolstoy and Dostoevsky finished their first novels. (So did Fitzgerald.)
Proust published his first poetry collection.
Rimbaud had given up writing poetry two years before.
Schumann tried to kill himself.
Ian Curtis succeeded.
River Phoenix OD’d.
Miles Davis recorded The Birth of Cool.
Caravaggio paintedBoy with a Basket of Fruit.Brando played Stanley in Streetcar.Van Gogh was a failed pastor.
Goethe was a failed lawyer.
Foucault and Sartre failed their agrégations. (Deleuze and Aron passed.)
Céline was in the Cameroons, working for a lumber company.
Henry Miller was in Willamsburg, doing jack shit.

Status

that's all it is, gerald, my young hero. at any rate we'll spare ourselves the nausea of stirring the old broth any more. you be beautiful, my gerald, and reckless. there are perfect moments. wake up, gerald, convince me of the perfect moments, oh, convince me, i need it.

so you are a boy, she said, who will kill a man rather than be late to meet your sweetheart? we hold together, the females of this earth. i shall mark your forehead now, so that the girls will know of that, when they look at you, and they will like you for it.